Tonight’s Presidential debate will focus on foreign policy, and that means we will once again wade into this attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the details of which look more muddled than ever. The need for clarity among the media and political class – either this arose from a spontaneous demonstration, or it was a pre-planned Al Qaeda assault – took quite a few hits over the weekend.

First, we learned that the CIA, at the time UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday shows and discussed the attack in terms of a response to the video, prepared the talking points that she used for that analysis. This is what those talking points said: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” The CIA wasn’t sure of this information, and properly hedged it within the document they sent out. Rice described the narrative as the “best information” she had at the moment.

Even though the Administration later backed away from this analysis, reporting from David Kirkpatrick at the New York Times indicates that the video did play a role. There may not have been a specific protest outside the consulate that then turned into an assault – in fact, US intelligence discovered that the same weekend that Rice went on the air, but didn’t get her the information in time – but the decision to make the assault came out of the reaction to both the video and the protests in other Muslim cities like Cairo, Egypt. Intelligence indicates that the militants who participated in the Benghazi attack watched the Cairo protests and were inspired by them.

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya [...]

The attack was “carried out following a minimum amount of planning,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under investigation. “The attackers exhibited a high degree of disorganization. Some joined the attack in progress, some did not have weapons and others just seemed interested in looting.”

A second U.S. official added, “There isn’t any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance.” Most of the evidence so far suggests that “the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” earlier that day, the official said.

The real question should concern security at the consulate, which did have these prior incidents. However, to the extent that anyone requested additional security in Libya, it was for the embassy in Tripoli, not the consulate in Benghazi.

This hazy, fog-of-war situation will now get hammered like a square peg into the round hole of our political debate. The Administration’s reaction to the assault was properly solemn, and they reflected the tension of the intelligence as it came in by tailoring their responses accordingly. The security situation hasn’t been discussed nearly as much as this notion of a cover-up, because Republicans always focus their foreign policy critiques on posturing rather than actions. And that will be reflected tonight as well. Real questions can be asked about the Benghazi assault, but we probably won’t hear any of them tonight.

Besides Benghazi, we’ll have to be made afraid of the Chinese, told again what a threat Cuba is, not to mention Chavez. Be befuddled over whether Al Quaeda is on the run or under our beds. How Iran is responsible for all things evil (at least those not attributed to Al Quaeda though, what the heck, they’re all basically the same). And, as the centerpiece, be treated to a episode of why Bibi is the wisest man in the world much deserving of American subservience. And probably some other favorites.

And the obfuscation of the GWB WMD went on for how long and how many people died? And how many in the administration lied and lied and lied? For years, and the outing of Plame, all in the name of those lies. Not that I want to make light of the deaths in Benghazi, but honestly, I do not get the thrust of the story.

There is no US consulate in Benghazi, which is why State didn’t care about security and why State tried to avoid responsibility. It was a CIA operation with about two dozen agents. (Ineffective in intelligence, of course.) Why should State provide security for CIA? Besides, the Agency likes to keep a low profile.

The US does not have an embassy, a consulate or a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. There are none listed on this State Department list of all the US embassies and consulates in the world.http://www.usembassy.gov/

There is (and was) no US consulate in Benghazi. No consul. No consular officials. No commercial officers. No diplomats of any kind. No consulate. It was a CIA operation with two dozen agents which the US has euphemistically called a “mission.” Gives it a religious flavor. Chris Stevens was in this dangerous, volatile city in eastern Libya to coordinate CIA arms shipments to Turkey. His last official act in Benghazi was a dinner meeting with the Turkish ambassador.

Stevens was also probably using his past knowledge of Libyan militias — he managed them for the US from Benghazi in 2011 — to coordinate drone strikes in eastern Libya. There were several reported (by CNN) against an al Qaeda training camp in the Derna area in June.

Isn’t it odd that not even one western reporter has gotten on the real story here — the Benghazi-Turkey arms & people connection and drone strikes — that motivated Ambassador Stevens to be in Benghazi rather than in Tripoli where he was needed for necessary diplomatic functions.

Eastern Libya is over-run with al Qaeda units. The militant targeted by a drone attack in June was Abdulbasit Azuz, a long-time associate of al-Zawahiri. Azuz was dispatched by al-Zawahiri to Libya from Pakistan’s tribal areas in the spring of 2011 to create a foothold for al Qaeda in Libya, according to CNN. This same unit conducted a bomb attack on the Benghazi “mission” in June. So much for “demonstrations.”

Obama has told many lies (but what’s new). His fake cover story that Stevens was in Benghazi “to review plans to establish a new cultural center and modernize a hospital,” as if Benghazi is a bed or roses and not a hotbed of militant extremism, is a larger whopper than the “video” lie, really.

“Fog of War” my ass! Its just flat out classic government lies. Just like with WMD, just like Pat Tillman, just like with Jessica Lynch, just like the Bin Laden raid (“Shut up about it” – John Kerry)

The fact that anybody believes the cover story is anything but CIA psyops is amazing, how often do we have to be lied to before we stop believing the fucking CIA? Anybody with half a brain coulda figured out that blaming this shit on a youtube video that nobody had ever seen was a joke from the beginning. The fact that we totally destabilized their country, throwing it in to total chaos isn’t the reason they attacked us… no… it must be because they hate us for our freedom.

Q: Good morning, sir. Corporal Edwards from 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion. My question is in regards to the conflict in Libya. I read article in the U.K. newspaper the Telegraph a little over a month ago, and it was an interview with one of the rebel leaders. He explicitly said that some of his fighters had fought with the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. I found this to be somewhat disheartening, since we as a country were supporting the rebels militarily and through public opinion. Who are these rebels in Libya? And how do we know that they won’t be like the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, where we’re supporting them today and then getting blown up by them tomorrow?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think that the honest answer to your question is that with the exception of some of the people at the top of the opposition or the rebels in Libya, we don’t know who they are. And I think this is one of the reasons why there has been such reluctance, at least on our part, to provide any kind of lethal assistance to the opposition.http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4822

[Militia commanders] criticized the USG for supporting National Forces Alliances leader [...] Mahmoud Jibril. If Jabril won, they said, they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi, a critical function they asserted they were currently providing.

They day after he was assassinated, Jabril was barely defeated in two rounds of voting.

The terr’ists are using the CIA and O’Bummer’s trying to avoid the crazies launching A-merka on a Kamikaze mission. O’Bummer baited Romney in the debate and waited for the kill.

The “intelligence community” loves to turn the enemy’s weapon back on him – the most clever offense is a jujitsu defense.

The compound had been attacked previously, the Brits and Red Cross had left town, the dangers were known, especially by Stevens with his background in Libya. There was plenty for Stevens to do in Tripoli with a new government. So he must have been ordered to go to Benghazi for some reason(s) and it definitely couldn’t have been what Obama said: “to review plans to establish a new cultural center and modernize a hospital.”

So Stevens was ordered to dangerous Benghazi for 9/11 (he arrived on 9/10). When the compound was attacked in the evening of 9/11 the attack was reported by telephone in real time from the compound’s Tactical Operations Center and images were transmitted by a Predator drone flying overhead. Yet Washington, which had ordered Stevens to go there, presumably, did nothing.

Next day Obama gave a Rose Garden speech and then flew off to Vegas. I look for Romney to tear him a new one.